DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative: Needs ... - Urban Institute

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DC Promise Neighborhoods Initiative: Needs Assessment and Segmentation AnalysisOverview of IndicatorsStudents Live in Stable CommunitiesNeeds AssessmentThe Students Live in Stable Communities (SLISC) Results-Driven Working Group (RDWG) was chargedwith ensuring that DCPNI students live in stable communities. The U.S. Department of Education (ED)requires Promise Neighborhood planning grantees to define stable communities as reducing midyearenrollment withdrawals; however, ED also allows the planning grantees to broaden the definition.Therefore, the SLISC working group also defines stable communities as the need to ensure that the fiveDCPNI neighborhoods are vibrant places where DCPNI residents want to live. SLISC working groupparticipants include community development specialists, the DC Housing Authority, an ANCcommissioner, school registrars’ offices, and a small number of residents from Kenilworth Courts publichousing development and Mayfair.The three areas of need that the SLISC working group identified are: Increasing student enrollments at Kenilworth and Neval Thomas elementary schools, Reducing the number of Cesar Chavez students who withdraw,o The ED-required indicator for this working group is to track midyear withdrawalsand entries measured by dividing the total number of new student entries andwithdrawals at a school, from the day after the first official enrollment number iscollected through the end of the academic year Increasing community involvement and awareness across all of the DCPNI neighborhoods sothat families want to and understand how to create a vibrant community.Increasing Kenilworth and Neval Thomas EnrollmentsFindings: Midyear withdrawals are not a problem at Kenilworth and Neval Thomas Elementaries.Instead, the issues at these elementary schools are that their enrollments have declined drasticallypartially due to the increase in public charters, but also because some parents intentionally enroll theirchildren in schools outside of the neighborhood. Parents also voiced their frustration in getting theirspecial needs children the services they require.WithdrawalsED requires the tracking of midyear withdrawals and entries because school switches are associatedwith a variety of poor academic outcomes such as decreased academic performance and a variety ofsocial, behavioral, and interpersonal effects (Prebish and Downy 1999; Schwartz et al. 2007; Swansonand Schneider 1999). Negative effects, especially academic ones, have been shown to be more severefor younger children (Rumberger 2003). In addition, schools that experience significant turnover in theirstudent body tend to perform worse as well (Hanushek et al. 2004, Rhodes 2005).The SLISC working group collected withdraw data from Chavez Parkside Schools and has requested thesame data for Kenilworth and Neval Thomas Elementaries from the DCPS Data Accountability Office. Theworking group also interviewed the administrative school registrar staff at all three schools. According82
DC Promise Neighborhoods Initiative: Needs Assessment and Segmentation Analysisto both registrar offices at Kenilworth and Neval Thomas Elementaries, they have few midyearwithdrawals. Most of these withdrawals are because families move away. Students who are enrolled outof boundary (i.e., those who live outside of the official school catchment area) can be withdrawn if theydon’t meet particular behavioral standards, but there have been no instances of this, according to bothelementary school registrars.Enrollments of the Two DCPS SchoolsWhile excessive withdrawals are not a problem for the two DCPNI elementary schools, a generalunderenrollment of the schools is a problem. Kenilworth Elementary suffers from this problem morethan Neval Thomas Elementary. As Figure 1 shows, Kenilworth Elementary enrollment decreased by 54percent between 2001 and 2010, and Neval Thomas Elementary enrollment decreased by 44 percent.Figure 1: Enrollments at DCPNI Footprint Schools, 2001–2010Source: OSSE audited reports (October reported enrollments).These steep decreases in the two DCPS schools reflect the precipitous drop in DCPS’s enrollment overall(see Figure 2). Between 2001 and 2010, DCPS’s total enrollment dropped 29 percent. While Kenilworthand Neval Thomas Elementaries’ decreases reflect the same citywide trend, it should be noted that theirdecreases are much greater than the city’s overall decrease.83
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DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative: Needs ... - Urban Institute

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